Group items tagged

"Children love to learn, but at some point they lose that and become adults that don't like formal learning. Let's explore why 'play' has gotten such a bad rap and figure out how to get it back in education." Nice use of prezi.

"At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online."

Memes on moocs - 2 images taking a dig at the mooc hype.

Audrey Watters suggests this project should apply itself to education too. ""'I have read and agree to the Terms'" is the biggest lie on the web," insists a new project Terms of Service; Didn't Read. "We aim to fix that." A play on the Internet lingo "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), the site reviews the Terms of Service agreements for major websites and applications. TOS;DR then rates the terms from good to bad, A to F, based on things like data portability, anonymity, cookies, data ownership, copyright, censorship, and transparency about law enforcement requests."

"The University of Waikato has an essential role to play in the promotion and pursuit of sustainability, through education, teaching and research, and the implementation of sustainable initiatives on campus. We strive to model a working example of sustainability in action."

"Musical instruments produce sounds. Composers produce music. Musical instruments reproduce music. Tape recorders, radios, disc players, etc., reproduce sound. A device such as a wind-up music box produces sound and reproduces music. A phonograph in the hands of a hip hop/scratch artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with a phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced - the record player becomes a musical instrument. A sampler, in essence a recording, transforming instrument, is simultaneously a documenting device and a creative device, in effect reducing a distinction manifested by copyright."

(Note - free ebook version) - At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online.

The United States government said today that even if the indictment of the Megaupload corporation is dismissed, it can continue its indefinite freeze on the corporation's assets while it awaits the extradition of founder Kim Dotcom and his associates. The US Govt is playing in the MPAA puppet film.

"I personally believe that the greatest role you [libraries] play is around the documentary national identity. People come to you to find out about their ancestors, to find out what life was like, to critically evaluate and understand the past."

Interesting article on plagiarism in computer science, with a suggestion that this is the fault of teaching design and that students are just playing the game.

"Social media and online games have the potential to convey 21st century skills that aren't necessarily part of school curricula - things like time management, leadership, teamwork and creative problem solving that will prepare teens for success in college and beyond. Making the transition between a highly structured environment in high school to a self-driven, unstructured environment in college can prove a huge challenge for many kids. Educators spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix this problem. The solution doesn't lie solely with games, but a lot of the psychology that motivates teens to play games holds potential. We need to figure out how to tap in."

"The Design Studio is a developing toolkit which draws together a range of existing and emergent resources around curriculum design and delivery and the role technology plays in supporting these processes and practices. The Studio will provide access to project outcomes and outputs from the JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery programmes as they are developed and will continue to be sustained as a community resource after the programmes finish."

"Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation. For more information, download the Introduction to Our Space [pdf], FAQ [pdf], and Road Map [pdf]. All curricular units and lessons are free and available for download below. The full casebook [pdf - 133MB] can be downloaded using the link at the bottom of the page." Critiqued by @downes for not addressing the issue properly "This is "a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments." The content divides into five major subject areas: participation, identity, privacy, credibility, and authorship and ownership. I'm not sure these are the top five things I would list when thinking of ethical dimensions of new media environments. While it's useful that there is a section on flamers, lurkers and mentors I think there should be something about hate, racism and bulling. And while a section on credibility is a good idea, it should be based on the principles of reason and inference, not outrageously bad definitions like this: "Networking-the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information." And this: "Collective intelligence-evidence that participants in knowledge communities pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal." Wow, those are just wrong. Maybe I need to review this and criticize it more closely."

Impressive example of what will be possible in the latest EPUB3 format. (via @dakvid)

"Being connected changes learning. When those connections are global, the experience of knowledge development is dramatically altered as well. Over the past four years, a growing number of educators have started experimenting with the teaching and learning process in order to answer critical questions: "How does learning change when formal boundaries are reduced? What is the future of learning? What role with educators play in this future? What types of institutions does society need to respond to hyper-growth of knowledge and rapid dissemination of information? How do the roles of learners and educators change when knowledge is ubiquitous? ... (The result is) a MOOC with each week being facilitated by an innovative thinker, researcher, and scholar. Over 30 of them. From 11 different countries."

RT @VC_UEL: 22% of students influenced by social network of target univ http://j.mp/oWHfoQ (via @JossWinn) #SoMe #highered #yam

As we thought - a marketplace app playing on the name. Still need to check out though!